The Fellowship of the Bling

So… stop me if you’ve read this book.

Ten unlikely companions risk their lives to save the fate of the world decide not to sleep in on their day off from school and band together for one incredible journey to the evil Mordor Georgetown to destroy the One Ring stereotype of black teenagers in DC.

Yeah? All I can say is … good thing the fate of the world really wasn’t left to us. But rest assured this entry could be just as lengthy as that book. For those who “qualified,” the culminating event/test of Co-Workerette’s life skills class was a trip to Georgetown and lunch at a nice restaurant frequented by the tourists and locals, followed by an afternoon of shopping. A few of the classes had been devoted to etiquette and the like, so she arranged for the waiters (she works there on the weekends) to grade the kids on various things they’d covered in class.

The aforementioned lessons would not have been possible before a spirited debate about how the purpose was not to “change” them, or “make them white,” as Tyson put it, but to learn skills that will be needed for future things like job interviews and whatnot. And so they embraced the lessons with gusto, demonstrating the importance of possessing the skills of civil public behavior they’d surely use later in life.

Whatever. They just wanted the free food.

Really, though, I can’t even blame them; I was never comfortable with the class. It felt like Whiteology to me, too. Yes, she was teaching them some valuable skills, but… oh, hell. This is for another entry.

So, anyway, on an unseasonably windy and chilly Monday morning, 8 teens (Tyson, Red, Cupcake, The Professor, Diva, Bug, Bitsy, and Dimples — though I’m not sure how he qualified having missed so much time), along with Co-Workerette and me, set out for the neighborhood metro station. DC schools were out that day. Why? I wanted to see if any of them knew.

“[Dimples],” I said as we walked, “Do you know what holiday this is?”

“It… uh, ain’t it, um… pro—, uh, consta—, um, constipation day?”

He was 100% serious.

“Ah, no. ‘Emancipation Day.’ Do you know what that is?”

“No.”

“When Lincoln ended slavery, he wrote something called the Emancipation Proclamation. And this is a celebration of that.” Technically it’s a DC holiday for the emancipation of DC slaves, but I doubt he cared about specifics. Or really, any of it.

“Oh. Okay.”

Yes, because Abe totally freed the slaves so that their children’s children’s children’s children could be denied even more education with a pointless holiday. I kept that thought to myself.

So onward we trekked. It normally takes about 20 minutes to walk to the station, because despite the tracks being “right there,” in this part of the city they’re elevated. So we typically have to walk allllll the way around the plethora of liquor stores, cash advance joints, carry outs, dilapidated housing units, and other pleasant neighborhood scenery. But the smaller group dynamics changed the game a bit. They wanted to take the infamous “shortcut.”

Hoo, boy.

We crawled through a hole cut in the iron fence of the complex’s parking lot, which lead into a section of trees and a muddy trail beaten into the ground by short-cutters past. The people in front of me had no problem with the steep drop on the trail and ensuing potential for wiping out in the mud at the bottom. I surfed down before I could think about it. Silently congratulating myself for escaping what I thought was the worst part of the shortcut, I bounded down the trail to keep up with Bug and Tyson. Alongside the left of us was a precarious edge and a very long drop to the street below. I figured the further we moved down the trail, the lower that edge would get to the street. In other words, a manageable jump.

Oh, the naivety of adulthood.

Suddenly Bug and Tyson took a sharp left and leaped off the side and to the ground below — WAY down below. I could hear Co-Workerette somewhere behind me already flipping out about getting down. There was a giant green transformer/thing/box that apparently lot of kids use as an island to jump onto and then down. But I quickly nixed that given the rain-slicked surface. Not to mention the jumping distance. If you miss that and fall, you’d probably die a lot more painfully than if you just jump straight away.

I didn’t give myself a chance to mull my options and just… gracefully careened off the edge. I escaped with only a muddy shin. Whee!

Co-Workerette watched as a couple kids jumped down before she foolishly tried the “jump to the green island” method. I tried not to watch. Somehow, she made it in tact. Eventually, the only ones up on the trail were Cupcake, Diva and Red. All seemed opposed to doing anything but sitting there. Sensing a major event about to take place, I pulled out my little camera and switched to video mode. (2/8/11 note: all of the password protected photos/video from this entry will look like broken links at the moment – server issues. They’ll be restored whenever I get some time. Thanks)

I’m only sorry I shut off the camera when I did, because Red’s subsequent jump and hysterical 10-minute long freak-out (this is not an exaggeration) was beyond priceless.

Once everyone was finally on the ground, we made it past the shady alleys, dilapidated fences, broken glass, dirty needles, piles of garbage, and freight train tracks leading to the station — probably shaving a whole two minutes off our projected arrival time.

It was a bit of a wait for the next train, so a bunch of the kids decided to keep warm by riding the elevator up and down. The rest of them seemed content with running laps around the platform and generally being loud and disruptive and just like normal kids excited to be going somewhere.

“Okay, class is officially starting now!” Co-Workerette called out, receiving a predictable non-response.

Regrettably, I didn’t ask her if she had the transportation route covered. I know about six different ways to get to Georgetown, but I assumed since she worked there that she had complete understanding of how to arrive the most quickly and efficiently. Well, turned out I was 0-for-2 on assumptions for the day. We got off the train at K Street, which is Lawyer Central downtown. After reaching the street level, everyone emerged from the escalator and looked all around at the bustling sidewalks and big buildings.

“So, where is this bus that we need?” Co-Workerette wondered aloud. Before I could answer, I noticed a conspicuous silence around us. Muttering a quick crrrap, I took off.

I barely made it in time to pull Bug back from boarding a random bus. Then I reeled in Red and Cupcake from posing and dancing in the camera path of whatever this guy was trying to film. Then I chased Tyson and Dimples out of the line at the hotdog stand. All the while Co-Workerette peered at the bus schedule signs. Is this what kindergarten teachers feel like? I eventually got everyone rounded up and back into a semi-stationary group. Co-Workerette wondered which direction was “west,” so I pointed for her, and finally we knew where to find our bus.

“Okay,” she glowered at the group, “class is officially, officially starting now.”

After a small 5-minute long mishap while boarding (she calculated the wrong fare amount and I had to fork over a few more dollars to cover everyone), we were finally on our way. This bus happened to be the “circulator,” which hits all the popular tourist spots on the main loop. So we were the only people on the packed bus not holding a DC sightseeing book. And as such, quite frankly, we were freaking them all out.

I’ve become more of an ethnographer over the course of the year than I’d ever have anticipated. I’ve been immersed in a culture I knew nothing of (first hand, anyway — no sense in counting television and rap music) and have since learned the cultural norms. As we stepped on the bus, I got to see them in stark relief. There was a time, before I worked in the inner city, that I wondered when encountering groups like ours, why their tones of voices were naturally ten times the average loudness. Why they’d blast their iPods and dance in the aisles of the bus. Why they were impervious to what the person behind them might be thinking about their actions. I don’t wonder anymore. I am fascinated by it. And in keeping with the unexplored themes lurking on the periphery, let’s just say it’s exactly the kind of “behavior” Co-Workerette has coached them not to do when we go to lunch.

Anyway these tourists… were just all staring. It was fun.

We finally reached our stop, located on one of the main shopping streets in Georgetown. Co-Workerette stopped the brood outside the restaurant door and made a last-ditch attempt to cram a bunch of behavioral tips into their brains. She ran through a list of what they’d be graded on, what was expected of them, and general stuff that they “yeah yeah yeah we know”-ed at. After picking someone to present our reservation to the hostess, we walked towards the door.

“Okay. Seriously, guys? Class is starting. NOW,” was her final plea.

—–

They had a long table set up for us, and everyone filled in accordingly. I sat at the end of one side, with Dimples predictably picking the seat to my right, and Tyson across from me with Diva next to him. The acoustics of the room made it difficult for me to hear conversation beyond the four of us.

The hostess passed out the menus and ran through the lunch specials, but everyone was too busy taking in the surroundings to pay attention to whatever random psuedo-snotty fish and seaweed concoction they were offering today. I noticed that most of them had already put the cloth napkins on their laps – apparently having paid more attention during class than I thought.

“This ain’t much like Ruby Tuesday,” Dimples mused aloud.

The waiter, who I’d guess was either being punished severely or drew the short straw, arrived and began taking drink orders. When he approached our end, Dimples quizzed him on the pop selection and finally selected a sprite. I ordered a coke. He turned to Tyson.

“What will you be drinking today, sir?”

“I want a coke and sprite mixed with a little bit of lemonade in it,” Tyson asked. I gave him a funny look, and he returned it, before glancing back at the waiter. “Please.”

I shook my head.

“What?” he looked at me.

“Nothing,” I smirked back.

Co-Workerette informed the group that they could pick out three appetizers to share among themselves. I’ll tell ya, I could have died of shock when everyone wanted the buffalo wings. She ordered two baskets of those (along with “a bowl of ranch dressing”), the grilled pizza, and some kind of seafood dip that I was sure she’d be the only one to touch. Sadly, I lost a bet with myself when no one mentioned the lack of mumbo sauce.

Diva’s forehead crinkled as she read through the menu.

“I want the uh, pasta, uh, pasta, um… what’s that word?”

She pointed to her choice.

“Bolognese. It’s meat sauce,” I clarified.

I felt a poke in my side.

“What’s that?” Dimples asked.

“That’s pasta. It has shrimp in it.”

“Mixed up?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it fried?”

“No, it’s marinated in something.”

“Do it come with fries?”

“No, but trust me, you’ll have plenty of food.”

He seemed satisfied with that and turned away.

“You get to pick your cheese on the burgers!” Tyson seemed happy with this.

“So what are you going for?”

“I dunno,” he said. “Don’t think I’ve ever had these. What would you get?”

I recommended the cheddar – with bacon – and he took me up on the advice.

“What are you getting?” Tyson asked.

“A Reuben,” I said, and seeing his blank look I elaborated. “It’s corned beef with sauerkraut and swiss cheese and thousand island dressing.”

Three identical noises of disgust came from those around me.

“It’s what you’d get at a deli in New York City, only…not,” I tried, but they were beyond convincing.

The waiter came back and started taking lunch orders. Dimples was still quizzing me on how to pronounce things so I didn’t catch what anyone at the other end of the table got. Eventually he made his way to our end. Dimples endearingly screwed up the name of his dish, and Diva just pointed to hers instead of trying to say it.

Tyson ordered his burger, and then had an addendum.

“Me an’ her,” he gestured at Diva, “also want some, uh, chicken fingers between us.”

“[Tyson]!” Co-Workerette admonished from the middle of the table, “You don’t need that, you ordered a whole meal for yourself already.”

“It’s just something to share between us,” he said, like that the Curryout method of ordering food was universally applied in all eating situations.

The waiter seemed confused by this, as if he thought that three-drinks-in-one thing from five minutes ago was just some sort of beveragical anomaly. Amateur. I’m not even sure chicken strips were on the menu, let alone as an ala carte choice. But he scribbled away.

We had a few down minutes of the kids quizzing Co-Workerette on her relationship, or lack thereof, with the guy serving us, before he finally returned with drinks.

“Here’s your coke,” he said to me, then setting Tyson’s down, “And your… drink.”

There was something very Ferris Bueller’s Lunch Maitre d’ about the tone of his voice. I was amused.

He also set down baskets of bread at various points on the table. Tyson, Dimples and Diva eyed the one nearest to us warily. After a minute each kid took a piece and passed around the “community butter,” which was also a foreign concept.

“Why do it taste like this?” Tyson scowled, giving me full view of some lovely mastication.

“Like what?”

“It all chewy and nasty,” he clarified.

“Why’s the outside so hard?” Diva added.

“It’s just the type of bread it is,” I tried to explain.

Dimples looked at me like I was making him eat a baby whale. Raw.

“Why can’t we just get real bread? This stale,” he whined.

“This is the kind they serve at these restaurants. It’s … special bread,” I reached.

“So it’s White People Bread,” Tyson tossed at me. “I ain’t eatin’ that shit.”

I didn’t humor him with a response. He’s such a rabble rouser.

Thankfully, the appetizers arrived a couple minutes later and the huge buffalo wings distracted them from having to pick at the bread. I was right about no one else trying Co-Workerette’s crab dip, and the “grilled pizza” was actually 4 tiny pieces of flatbread daintily-clad with tomatoes and cheese. No one seemed too concerned with the unpizza-ness of that particular offering because the giant bowl of ranch dressing took them on a nostalgia trip to … well, probably when they all went to the Curryout the night before.

The rest of lunch was just as eventful. Diva switched seats with Tyson because Dimples kept kicking her underneath the table like a 14-year-old with a crush on a girl… which… is what he is. Dimples was also convinced that the “white people in the corner” kept looking at him funny… which… they probably were. Diva and Tyson couldn’t figure out how to work the fresh pepper grinder thing. Tyson decided his beverage cornucopia was “nasty” and so he ordered an iced tea – only to be outraged when it arrived unsweetened. I tried to explain that most restaurants give you tea to sweeten yourself. He still chose to be mad the rest of our time in there. Diva was in the bathroom for ten minutes, and when she finally came back, informed me that she threw up her lunch (“spaghetti that’s not my mom’s makes me puke,” she said. I asked her why she ordered it, then. “I dunno”). Dimples ate the shrimp off his pasta but wouldn’t touch anything else because it tasted “weird.” He ended up picking off the plate of fries between Tyson and Diva… and continued to kick her – now diagonally – under the table.

Co-Worketette had to remind everyone about keeping conversations restaurant-appropriate and to watch the noise level, but other than that, they seemed to be taking the whole etiquette thing seriously. Although I don’t really know what was going on at the other end. I saw Bug trying to shove some kind of funky-looking pile of mush into his mouth. It may have been a burrito at one point. He seemed to be more interested in tapping his fork on his glass and calling for a toast every five minutes.

Almost everyone had to get the remainders of their lunches boxed up. When the bill came, Co-Workerette passed it across the table for a couple volunteers to calculate the tip, as practiced during class. They fought over who would get to count the money out, probably because no one’s ever held more than forty bucks in their hands at once.

The waiter came back to pick up the check and delivered the “report card,” which Co-Workerette informed everyone would be revealed and dissected during the next class period. She wouldn’t even let me see it. Hmmph.

After a mass trip to the restrooms, during which everyone conveniently forgot their “lessons” and acted like a band of Irish rugby hooligans, we stepped into the attached indoor shopping center.

We all agreed to meet back outside the restaurant in two hours. I assumed Co-Workerette would kind of keep an eye on one group, and I’d go around with the other, but I guess she had some personal shopping to take care of and ran off before anyone could follow her. I looked at the 8 kids standing around me and shrugged.

Cupcake and Red asked if I could take them up Wisconsin Ave. so I agreed. Dimples, Tyson and Diva walked off in another direction, and I said a quick prayer for their collective good judgment. Bug, The Professor, and Bitsy tagged along with us. I honestly did not want to deal with Bug’s 12-year-old antics for the next two hours so I made sure to (repeatedly) tell him that they didn’t have to go with us. But I got the sense that underneath his penchant for childish rebellion he was absolutely scared out of his mind to be in such a “foreign” place without an adult. And so I made myself suck it up in the name of… well, my job.

We drifted through the stores all up and down the shopping mecca that is Wisconsin Avenue. I was much more interested in this sociological experience than looking at all those swell things I had not the money to buy. So each time we entered a new store, I paid attention to how the employees received this unlikely band of five black teenagers. I don’t want to make it sound like we were walking through Selma, Alabama in 1965, but Georgetown is the most chic part of DC. This is where the politicians and dignitaries and celebrities and tourists and pretty much everyone else come for shopping and fine dining and general perusing of the quaint cuteness that are its old, colorful rowhouses and brick sidewalks. I mean, Georgetown doesn’t have a metro stop because the locals “want to keep the riff-raff out.” That should say it all. Our “group” is probably the rarest of sights.

So anyway, I was mainly curious about seeing the perpetuation of stereotypes. Or maybe lack thereof. I didn’t know what to expect.

Our first stop was Abercrombie and Fitch, which received its name only after the creators decided Overpriced Crap For White People wasn’t as catchy. But the loud, incessant bass pumping from the speakers kept the group happy. Cupcake was absolutely sure that this was where I got all my clothes. She pointed at a huge sepia wall ad of a buff twentysomething in Abercrombie boxers.

“Izzat yo boyfriend? Haha sikenah!”

I retaliated by flinging a scrap of cotton at her, that, according to the tag, was called “shorts.”

“Here, you’d look cute in these.”

“You trifilin!”

A girl and her mom looking at tank tops turned and stared at us. Cupcake threw it back at me, and we decided we’d been there long enough.

The employee folding the argyle cardigans by the door in J-Crew did a hilariously cartoonish double-take when we walked in. I wish I had a picture of it. But he recovered nicely and greeted us like he would anyone else. Red looked at the season’s new line of sundresses like they held the secrets of the universe. Bug was upset that it seemed to be a “girls only” store. I’m not sure if he simply didn’t see the men’s side, or if he just thought those flare-leg cords had no chance of going on a male’s body.

We spent the longest time of any store thus far in Up Against the Wall, which featured a lot more urban-style of clothing and a whole section of bling, including toy guns studded with gaudy fake jewels and other glittery things. Everyone crowded around the glass case and pointed to the ones they wanted most. The consensus seemed to be the diamond-encrusted pistol and skull handcuffs were the tightest shizz in there, yo.

Everyone was visibly more comfortable in that store, but it was also the only one where an employee literally followed the group around. She was about as inconspicuous as Wile E. Coyote wearing a cactus disguise.

Red picked out a thuggish-looking hat and put it on me, declaring it “tight” and urging me to buy it. This was about the time where I started feeling like Mowgli. Oh my, that was a horribly un-PC analogy. My point is that when I came here, I was very different from them. And I still am. But sometimes… I’m just another shortie in a reprint-logo, off-glitter, straight-billed Washington Nationals hat. And those are good times.

It started raining, so we headed back to the aforementioned indoor mini-mall that is probably primarily there for days like this. I wondered how they were going to stay amused for another hour and a half, but we found a music and movies store that had something for everyone. That was pretty uneventful, except for having to steer Bug out of the adult movie section and explaining to Bitsy who the Beatles were. That was so painful.

“Oh… like them white dudes… Backstreet Boys?”

I had to excuse myself to the poster corner to shed a few tears.

Eventually we left and headed further into the mall. We passed by the enticing clear windows of The Sharper Image and I knew we’d reached “the end.” People who regularly shop at malls like this are even powerless to resist at least stopping in for a few minutes to play with all the crazy gadgets. I could only imagine what it would be like for a group of kids who’d never seen one. Especially when the other three members of our group waved from the inside. Their wide-eyed gapes lead them straight to the cluster of massage chairs.

Somebody turned up the Jackson Five on the fancy stereo and Red, of course, had her moves already prepared. I pulled out my camera and got a quick clip of her dancing. Note Bug’s whining at the end of the clip and then congratulate me for hearing this on a daily basis and not being completely insane by now.

They stayed in there for almost an hour. I’m sure the employees of that store are used to people coming in and playing with everything and buying nothing, but probably not to this extreme. A bewildered woman kept coming over and asking if we needed help with anything.

Bug and The Professor were especially amused with the portable punching bag and got in some good practice. I have the memory of Diva trying out the “Love Handler” to carry with me the rest of my life. I don’t need much else. I’m just sorry that I didn’t get an actual picture of her trying to operate that thing.

After a while I noticed Dimples was not among the group so I wandered back into the hall and found him on a couch playing with his cell phone.

“Did you find a Verizon store?”

“Yeah,” he said, not looking up. “That white man try and tell me I need somethin’ else to make this work.”

“Well, do you?”

“I dunno,” he sighed. “I wanna go to PG.”

That wasn’t the first time during the day he’d expressed his desire to go to “PG” for his shopping. He was referring to Prince George’s Plaza, Maryland, where there’s a strip mall thing right off a metro stop catering to the predominantly African-American population.

“You can’t just get it here?”

“Them guys in the store be jonin’. I really needa go to PG.”

I let it drop after that. He likes to blow things out of proportion, so who knows what, if any, level of “joning” he experienced. But what was wide-eyed excitement at the beginning of the day changed to resentment at some point.

A couple minutes later, Tyson came out and flopped onto another couch and ate his leftover soggy fries before agreeing with Dimples about wanting to go to PG. The Professor followed soon after and amused himself with watching the shoppers go in and out of the surrounding stores. Every so often he’d mutter something like, “…son must be rich!”

I noticed with disdained amusement that a security guard walked over and stood across from where we were all gathered and didn’t move the entire time. This experience would have made a great social psychology paper.

Finally Co-Workerette got off the escalator and greeted us, armed with a couple bags from stores that aren’t even in my social class. We rounded everyone up and headed out into the wind and drizzle. This time I handled the bus selection and we made it up to the George Washington University metro stop in a few minutes.

And then we headed back east. East and past the invisible wall dividing the proverbial haves from the have-nots. Only these days, the wall is actually becoming a gaping chasm. Gentrification is making bad matters even worse, as DC developers continue to change neighborhoods like “ours” into ones more like Georgetown. All that does is displace the people who lived there. Pushes them other places, so they can live miserably somewhere else. It’s not actually helping anything.

But that’s for another entry.

We left the metro station and some of the kids seemed to get a second wind of energy, bounding across the train tracks and through the broken fences. A few brave souls tried the reverse-shortcut, jumping like flying squirrels from the green box to the wall and then somehow climbing up. Most of us wisely passed it, choosing to walk down the adjacent back alley. They were quieter than usual, maybe worn out from the long day… or maybe not. We made it back to the building in comfortable near-silence.

Tolkien ended his epic Lord of the Rings with the most complexly simple line I’ve ever read. After 1200+ pages and umpteen different characters, far-off lands, subplots of subplots, and complicated literary themes seamlessly woven together, the end came plainly and reverently via the book’s unsung hero, Samwise Gamgee, upon his return home to the Shire.

“Well, I’m back.”

In a strange mixture of comforting familiarity and weary resentment, I think a lot of those kids were thinking the same thing.